"I moved to New Jerusalem. Well, to Salt Lake City, first. I studied with the Jesuits, to be a teacher, then I saw an ad for a teacher in the paper, and I packed my bag and caught the next train. And here I am, not the me that came home from sea, and not the me who I was before I went to sea, but someone in between, a new me -- teaching, but on dry land, and not chasing dangerous adventures, but still reading my old log-book and smiling." We sat for a moment, in companionable silence. Then, abruptly, he checked his pocket watch and yelped. "Damn! Lunch was over twenty minutes ago!" He leapt to his feet, as smoothly as a boy, and ran into the schoolhouse to ring the bell. I folded up the waxed-paper, and thought about this adult who talked to me like an adult, who didn't worry about swearing, or telling me about his adventures, and I made my way back to class. It went better, the rest of that day. # In 75, Pa had almost never been home, but his presence was always around us. I'd call the robutler out of its closet and have it affix its electrode fingertips to my temples and juice my endorphins after a hard day at school, and when I was done, the faint smell of Pa's hair-oil, picked up from the 'trodes and impossible to be rid of, would cling to me. Or I'd sit down on the oubliette and find one of Pa's journals from back home, well-thumbed and open to an article on mental telepathy. We did ESP in school, and it was all about a race of alien traders who communicated in geometric thought pictures that took forever to translate. We'd never learned about Magnetism and Astral Projection and all the other things Pa's journals were full of. And while I never doubted the things in Pa's journals, I never brought them up in class, neither. There were lots of different kinds of truth. "James?" "Yes, Mama?" I said, on my way out to chop kindling. "Did you finish your homework?" "Yes, Mama." "Good boy." Homework had been some math, and some biology, and some geology. I'd done it before I left school. # The report cards came out in the middle of December. Mr Adelson sealed them with wax in thick brown envelopes and handed them out at the end of the day. Sealing them was a dirty trick -- it mean a boy would have to go home not knowing whether to expect a whipping or an extra slice of pie, and the fellows were as nervous as long-tailed cats in a rocking-chair factory when class let out. For once, there was no horseplay afterwards. I came home and tossed the envelope on the kitchen table without a moment's worry. I'd aced every test, I'd done every take-home assignment, I'd led the class, in a bored, sleepy way, regurgitating the things they'd stuck in my brain in 1975.